The Hagel Smear Campaign Goes Anonymous

HuffPo’s Amanda Terkel brings word of a new group “made up mostly of Democrats and independents,” to push back against Hagel on gay rights, among other things:

Dubbed “Use Your Mandate,” the group already has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a source close to the group who declined to be named in order to speak openly. …

The source close to the group said that for now, those involved are choosing to stay anonymous because they are allies with the Obama administration and hesitant to criticize the president publicly or fear retribution or pressure from the White House. The source characterized members as a “concerned group of people who … have some questions about Chuck Hagel,” including individuals who have “fought for LGBT rights for a long time.”

Chris Geidner at BuzzFeed quotes the executive director of a gay veterans group criticizing the group’s anonymous attacks, and has this update:

Bradley Tusk, said his firm is “coordinating the ads and activities for Use Your Mandate.”

“I get why our donors don’t want to alienate the White House but it’s not a particular concern of ours,” he said in an email.

“There’s a mix of people involved. A lot on the LGBT side but also Israel and the other topics you saw in the ads,” he said.

But we don’t actually know who these people are, or who’s giving them the money for ads on all the Sunday shows except Fox, sponsored tweets, and a mailer to 350,000 people. Daily Kos is suggesting that the group is a sock puppet “pushing GOP talking points,” though anti-Hagel Republicans have other places to waste their money.

“Use Your Mandate” wouldn’t even be necessary if any of the more important gay rights groups were actively fighting his nomination. But the Hagel backlash from the gay community mirrors that of the Zionist community in that the most influential organizations have largely held their fire. The Human Rights Campaign set aside its objections after Hagel recanted his comments on the 1998 ambassadorial appointment of James Hormel, whom he called “aggressively gay.” The objections are all on the fringes.

TPM recently reported on the context around Hagel’s remarks, which suggest his objection wasn’t to homosexuals serving in the diplomatic corps as such, but with Hormel’s ability to maintain relations with Catholic Luxembourg in light of his LGBT activism. It was also 1998–a world away in terms of the cultural acceptance of homosexuality–and Hagel wasn’t the only one to handle the Hormel nomination ineptly.

The group’s ad, embedded below, is so amateurish and strange it’s not surprising their supporters won’t do so openly. It takes pains to distance Hagel’s supposed bigotry from the President, who despite the Senator’s “anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-Israel, anti-gay, and pro-assault weapon” stances still made the nomination with the “best of intentions.”

Nothing like an anonymous, unaccountable smear campaign under the guise of equal rights on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. He never marched behind a mask.

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9 Responses to The Hagel Smear Campaign Goes Anonymous

Besides this group telling us so, what makes anyone think these people are “Democrats/independents” rather than neocons trying to get some cover? The group is totally anonymous and the far Left in America is almost as sour on “Israel Firsters” as the far Right is.

I don’t buy for a minute that this is anything but a cover for the same old Hagel critics.

Good grief. How utterly foolish, to attack Hagel on grounds of somehow promoting “gay rights”. Stupid virtually beyond belief, unless of course it is a hidden scheme more concerned with promoting idiotic Israeli policies in the West Bank.

“Senator Hagel’s apology and his statement of support for LGBT equality is appreciated and shows just how far as a country we have come when a conservative former Senator from Nebraska can have a change of heart on LGBT issues,” said The Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin.

The ambassador who Chuck Hagel once said was too “aggressively gay” to become a U.S. ambassador has not only accepted an apology, but he’s also gone on radio to express his support of the nominee for Defense secretary.

“Times have changed and this gentleman has changed as well,” James Hormel, former ambassador to Luxembourg,”

Can someone please create a campaign to smear, and then bury once and forever the smearers? Please?

We’d not be ‘smearing’ them….we’d be pointing out how unsubstantiated smears and obstructive negatavism is bad for us as a nation.

As a side note, it would mean the end of National Review and their absolutely disgusting bloggers and commenters. [just take a look at their coverage of the inauguration]. That would be a good thing. After a year or two, Christopher Buckley could re-create it under his editorship, and will solid, and respected (let alone respectable) writers.